When You Were Mine: An utterly heartbreaking page-turner Read online

  “Well?” My voices rises querulously. “Why aren’t you?”

  “The Department of Children and Families deals with many different cases,” Susan answers in a quiet, steady voice that suggests she has said this exact phrase many times before. “Some are more severe than others. No one is comparing you to anyone else, Beth. No one is saying you are a bad mother.”

  “Oh, right. Because good mothers get their kids taken away from them.” I let out a huff of laughter that sounds too much like a sob. I know I am close to breaking down, and I really don’t want to do that. I want to be strong, for my son.

  “Let us work with you,” Susan persists. “Together we can build a care plan for Dylan that you’re happy with, working to ensure that he is back with you as soon as possible.”

  I shake my head slowly, but already I feel myself weakening. It’s so hard to fight when it’s only me, and what’s the point of fighting, anyway? They’ll take him away no matter how much I resist. They have that power.

  And more than any of that, deep down I know I need help, no matter how scared I am to accept it. I know I can’t go on like this, day after day, year after year, exhausted and overwhelmed and alone. All along I’ve known that, even as I’ve done my best not to think about it, even as I hope that somehow, miraculously, things will get better on their own.

  But I’m afraid if I let Susan take Dylan away from me, things will change forever. I’ll never get him back, or, if I do, he’ll hate me. He’ll resent me for having given him up. And what if I have DCF breathing down my neck for the rest of my life because of this one slip? Once in the system…

  “I’m scared,” I whisper, hating that I can’t keep myself from saying it.

  “I know.” Susan nods in sympathy. “You feel powerless. I understand that, Beth, I really do. But you will continue to be involved in Dylan’s life, and all the decisions regarding his care. You can see the house where he is placed, and meet his foster carers. You can be involved in every step of the way.”

  I nod, gulping back tears, trying to hold it together. Am I actually thinking of agreeing to this? What choice do I have? Against me, Dylan lets out a breathy sigh and nestles closer. I feel a physical pain, a tearing in my chest. Am I having a heart attack? I try not to gasp out loud.

  “You can do this whether I agree or not,” I manage to get out. “Can’t you?”

  Susan pauses before she replies. “I have made arrangements for an emergency hold,” she admits finally. “It lasts for ninety-six hours. After that, we’d have to go to court, unless you agree to a voluntary placement for Dylan, which is what I think would be best in this situation.”

  And which was exactly what Marco wanted to do, all those years ago. Just give our son away like a raffle prize. But how can I do it now? It feels like such a betrayal of Dylan.

  “We want to help you, Beth,” Susan says yet again. “Truly, we do. And you have time to think. I can come to your home tomorrow, and go over everything with you.”

  Tomorrow, when Dylan might be gone. I sniff loudly, trying not to cry.

  “Why don’t I drive you back to your apartment,” Susan suggests. “You can pack a bag for Dylan and explain to him what is going to happen. There will be some paperwork to sign, and then we can take him together to his placement. It’s already been arranged. There’s a very nice family waiting and ready to take care of him.”

  It’s already been arranged. A sound escapes me, a sort of tortured gasp. My vision blurs and I don’t know whether it’s from the tears filming my eyes or the shock that this is happening. And, in the midst of it all, I feel myself nodding.

  Susan sets everything in motion with quick assurance; she takes me home in her car, with Dylan buckled in a booster seat next to me. He’s woken up and he is alert now, his eyes wide with alarm, the only thing keeping him from melting down my hand in his, my thumb stroking his palm the way I know he likes. I can’t imagine telling him, telling him very soon, that he is going to leave me. That I will be abandoning him. How can I possibly explain any of this?

  Back in my apartment, it feels like a lifetime has passed, and yet everything is still the same. Dylan’s cereal bowl, the milk chocolate-colored, is still on the kitchen table. A half-completed puzzle litters the living-room floor. Our bed is unmade, the duvet rumpled, the sheets creased. I’m conscious of the mess, yet I realize it doesn’t matter anymore. The worst has already happened. I hardly need to impress Susan with my housekeeping skills now.

  Numbly, my mind a blur, I go into the bedroom and start to pack a bag for Dylan. He stands next to me, watching as I take his small Cars backpack from the closet. It’s the only thing I have, and it strikes me as somehow both pathetic and absurd, that I don’t own a single suitcase. Not even a duffel bag.

  I bought this bag for preschool, when I had hopes that he might actually attend. We picked it out together, at the CVS where we just were this morning. He kept stroking it like a dog, cradling it like a baby. He was in love with that little backpack.

  We’ve used it since—not for preschool, but for picnics in the park, or to hold the bag of stale bread we sometimes feed the ducks. For library books or a spare change of clothes when we go to the sprinkler park in the summer. Now I’m packing his things in it, so he can be taken away. I can’t bear it, and still I start packing, reaching for a pair of his socks, Dylan so silent and trusting next to me. He has no idea what is happening.

  It only takes me about five seconds to realize his little Cars backpack is not going to be big enough for his clothes, his favorite rabbit toy, never mind the storybooks that he loves to have read to him every night. Will these anonymous foster carers read him stories? Will they know which ones he likes? How will they cope with his screaming, his fears? They won’t even know what scares him. What if they’re impatient, indifferent, or worse? What if they’re cruel?

  As I stand there with the backpack dangling from my fingers, a single pair of his underpants chucked into the bottom, Dylan tugs on my sleeve. His wide eyes ask a silent question. What are you doing?

  I take a breath, and then the impossibility of it all slams into my chest. I can’t let him leave. He will never understand. And wherever he goes, the people there won’t know that he’s afraid of crowds, or open doors, or grapes. I mean, what kid is afraid of grapes? They’ll never understand that, and yet I do.

  Dylan tugs on my sleeve again and shakes his head, which just about shatters my already cracked-open heart. I can’t do this to him. I can’t.

  And yet I have to. From my living room, Susan clears her throat, a purposeful sound.

  I need to get a move on.

  How?

  I can’t bear to look Dylan in the eye as I find another backpack, this one a plain navy canvas one I used to use back in high school. I pack his clothes in that one, and a few of his books, toys, and the worn, lop-eared rabbit he sleeps with in the other. All the while, Dylan watches and shakes his head, faster and faster, as he realizes what is happening. He must be starting to feel dizzy.

  Dylan is what is known as selectively mute, and has been since he was about three. At least, that’s what I diagnosed from what I’d read on the internet. He can talk, but he rarely does. A word here or there, given like a gift—duck when we’re at the pond, Mama when he’s falling asleep. Each one is unbearably precious.

  I’ve learned to get by with his hand gestures and head movements, the occasional word. As much as I’d love him for him to speak, I’ve chosen not to let it bother me. Still, I know most people would find it odd, and even now, when he must know something is seriously wrong, he doesn’t speak.

  It’s as I’m putting his bunny in the backpack, that Dylan breaks. He lets out that single, ongoing high-note shriek that people find so disconcerting.

  I turn to him, forcing myself to look into his face even though it hurts—his eyes are wide and panicked. “Dylan…”

  He shakes his head and keeps shrieking as he grabs the ear of his bunny.

  “Dylan, don’t, you’ll rip it—”

  Too late, the bunny’s right ear tears off, and several wads of cotton stuffing fall to the ground gently, like snow. Dylan stops shrieking for a single second as he stares at the terrible destruction we’ve both caused and then he flings himself on the floor.

  When Susan comes in, he is banging his head against the floor and we are right back where we were this morning in CVS, and I struggle not to sob out loud.

  “Dylan.” I kneel down next to him, knowing not to touch him when he’s like this because he hates that. I have to wait till he’s calmed down, and then he wants the best and biggest cuddle in the world, but will he this time? When will I hug him again, and be able never to let go?

  I push the thoughts away as I try to take control of the situation. I won’t grab his arm, either, the way I did this morning. I’m going to show Susan what a gentle, caring, consistent parent I really am.

  Except I can’t, because Dylan won’t stop and this is all so awful, and I can’t help but feel he’s right to cry. I want to cry.

  In fact, I am crying, tears streaming down my face, my voice too garbled now to get the words out that might comfort him, and of course my reaction just makes everything worse.

  “I think,” Susan says in a quiet, firm voice, “it might be better if I take Dylan to his placement now.”

  “What?” I stare at her blearily, my face covered in snot and tears, strange hiccuppy sounds coming from me. “No. I need to explain first.”

  “I think it’s too late for that, Beth. Sometimes a quick, clean break is easier.”

  A quick, clean break? She’s talking about my child. “No,” I say again, but I can barely get the word out because I am crying so hard, and I realize then Susan might be right. I’m no help to Dylan
when I’m like this, and I’m too far gone to pull myself together.

  Besides, I’m not sure I even want to see where he’s going just yet. Not when I’m like this, so raw and broken and obviously deficient. I don’t want to see the bigger house, the better people he’ll be with. Or, if it’s not like that, if it’s something else, something worse—I can’t bear to see that, either. Not yet.

  “Take him,” I manage to choke out. I am gasping and sobbing, my arms wrapped around my waist as if I have to hold myself together. “Just take him.”

  Susan moves with such brisk efficiency, I know she’s done this many, many times before. She speaks in a low, firm voice, telling Dylan exactly what she’s doing, as she scoops him up in a secure hold so he can’t kick or hit her.

  “The backpacks,” she instructs me, and numbly, still crying, I pick them up. I take the rabbit Dylan has hurled onto the floor and try to put its ear back together, but it’s useless. I stuff some of the wadding back in and then I put it on top of the other stuff in the Cars backpack before zipping it up. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I am now complicit.

  I am still weeping as I follow Susan and Dylan out to the car. Susan is speaking to Dylan the whole time, heedless of his shrieks, telling him what she is doing as she opens the back door and buckles him into the booster seat. And, amazingly, as she puts him in the car, Dylan suddenly stops fighting.

  I watch in shock as he goes limp and his expression turns vacant, all the fight drained out of him, his body seeming soft and boneless. And although I know it must be easier for Susan, it feels worse than if he kept fighting. He’s either given up or he’s in shock.

  “Dylan…” I croak, but my little boy doesn’t even look at me. “Dylan,” I say again, my voice breaking now, and Susan gives me a reproving look. I’m not helping, but I don’t care. “Dylan.”

  She closes the door before I can reach him, and I end up banging my fists against the window, hard enough to hurt. I want them to hurt.

  “Dylan!” I scream his name this time, a roar that tears at my throat. It feels primal, a maternal instinct that is absolutely necessary in this moment.

  Susan gives me a quelling look, worse than the one before. “Beth, stop, please. I know you’re upset, but this isn't helping.”

  She’s opened the door on the driver’s side. She’s going to leave.

  I pound the window again. “Dylan!”

  Finally Dylan turns to look at me. His face is pale and ghostlike from behind the window; the glass is smeared from my hands. His expression is blank, as if he can’t even see me, as if he’s gone somewhere else in his head because this reality is too much for him to deal with.

  “I’ll be in touch soon, I promise,” Susan says. “We’ll talk, and I’ll explain everything that is going on.”

  I drop my bruised and stinging hands and step back, utterly defeated, as Susan closes the car door and starts the engine. My gaze stays locked with my son’s as she pulls away from the curb and drives away, taking my very life with her.

  4

  ALLY

  Every sense is on high alert as I stand by the front door, waiting, too jumped up to do something useful like start dinner or tidy up. Since I returned Monica’s call an hour and a half ago, I’ve been flying around like a demented bird, first cleaning the guest room, then putting fresh sheets on the bed and emptying the drawers. Why didn’t we have the room ready?

  It’s a very nice room—spacious, with a closet and a view of the backyard and trees and houses beyond—but as I got everything ready I couldn’t help but think it looked a little bland, even sterile, like a room in the Holiday Inn. I could have bought some toys or books or stuffed animals to make it more age-appropriate, but as we had no idea what age or gender children we might eventually be getting, it seemed like a potential waste. Still, some homey touch would have been nice. Anything.

  After I cleaned the room, I dashed out to Whole Foods, throwing things in my shopping cart with wild abandon—ready-made meals and organic yogurt and bags of carrot sticks and bunches of grapes. I threw in some pediatric natural medicine too—Rescue Remedy and some essential oils and some homeopathic stuff I would normally never even look at.

  It was only as I was paying for it all that I remembered I might not even be able to give it to him, not without the parent’s permission.

  Him. I don’t even know his name. All I know is he’s seven years old, and he’s just been removed from his mother—why? I have no idea.

  All these thoughts are flashing through my mind as I stand by the door, waiting for this anonymous little boy to show up.

  Nick texted to say he’d be late, stuck in traffic on the south side of town with Josh, after picking him up from practice. I’m doing this first bit on my own, and I feel both excited and terrified, everything I learned in that ten-week course seeming to fall right out of my head. I thought I’d been paying attention, but right now I can’t remember a single relevant detail.

  A few tense and endless minutes later, a beat-up Ford Focus cruises slowly down the street before pulling into our driveway. Monica is driving and there is a woman I don’t recognize in the passenger seat, a fiftyish grandmotherly type with a neat bob and a kind, tired face. I can’t see anyone in the back, but he—this little boy—must be seated there.

  I catch my breath audibly, unsure if I should open the door now or if that would be too exuberant, too much. I want to be natural and friendly, but both feel beyond me right now; I feel like a robot, awkward and mechanical.

  Taking another deep breath, I open the door and smile. Monica is already getting out of the car.

  “Ally,” she calls. “Hi. Thanks for being able to do this on such short notice.”

  “Of course, it’s no problem.”

  Monica nods to the other woman who is now opening the back door of the car. “This is Susan, Dylan’s caseworker.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  She flashes me a quick, weary smile before she reaches into the car, presumably to unbuckle Dylan from his car seat. Dylan. I wait for him to appear, having no idea what to expect.

  Monica opens the other back door and takes out two battered-looking backpacks. Is that all he has? I keep my expression friendly and interested, trying not to show what I think of his lack of possessions. I remember how, in the course, Monica said foster kids often come to a placement with a few clothes held in a trash bag, sometimes nothing at all.

  “These are his things,” she says now, and I take the backpacks.

  Susan has helped Dylan out of the car, and she leads him by the hand towards me.

  The first thing I think is how small he is—such a slight boy, with a mop of dark hair that hangs in front of his eyes. His head is lowered so I can’t see his face, and he is walking so close to Susan he’s in danger of tripping her up. He’s wearing a dirty T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts that are ripped. Again, indignation burns through me at the sight of those raggedy clothes, a self-righteous fire I do my best to dampen. Now is not the time for those kinds of thoughts. I know that much.

  “Hey, Dylan.” Thankfully, my voice comes out friendly and normal, pitched right, without that manic, patronizing cheerfulness that is so easy to adopt with children you don’t know. “I’m Ally. I’m so pleased to meet you.”

  No response, but I wasn’t really expecting one.

  I open the screen door to the house; it’s still warm for October, and Nick hasn’t changed the screens to storms yet.

  Monica flashes me a reassuring smile as she and Susan, still holding Dylan by the hand, walk inside.

  Back when we were approved for foster care, we had our home assessed and approved, and yet I feel nervous now, as if something must be out of line, and Monica or Susan will point their finger to the crystal vase on the living room mantelpiece, or the PlayStation in the family room, and say Sorry, that’s against regulations.

  They don’t, though. Of course they don’t. Monica murmurs something about what a nice home it is, and I lead them back into the kitchen, with its two steps down to the big family room that we extended about ten years ago. It’s all nice and neat, because I’d just tidied up, but I don’t know whether it’s actually welcoming. There are no toys.